Shia LaBeouf’s Dad Has a Lot to Say
A chat with Jeff LaBeouf, the ex-clown, ex-con, and scary papa behind ‘Honey Boy’
Shia LaBeouf’s 71-year-old father Jeffrey, whose turbulent life and parenting skills come in for unsparing scrutiny in the actor’s new autobiographical film, Honey Boy, is more than ready for his turn in the limelight. You can tell by the way he cheerfully agrees to an interview within minutes of receiving an out-of-the-blue Facebook message from a random stranger. Whether the PR folks at Amazon Studios are quite ready is another question.
Materializing on my laptop screen, black beret fitted tightly over his stringy gray hair, a bushel of what appears to be “mota,” or marijuana, drying on the wall behind him, Jeff’s a lot like the guy his son plays in the film: wily and garrulous, if a few decades older and several notches less menacing. Now a bewhiskered codger with a sly, toothy grin, he brings to mind a cagey gold prospector in an old Scooby Doo episode. And for more than 90 minutes, he regales me with the highlights and lowlights of his colorful biography, occasionally “spitting” his poetry or pointing his webcam to display this or that feature of the modest home in the mountains above San Jose, Costa Rica, where he’s resided for the past six years.
